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Monica Lewinsky: Cultural Rorschach Test?

I told a group of friends at dinner recently that I was working on a story about Monica Lewinsky.

“I dropped a plate of fries in her lap once,” said one friend, a former waitress on the Upper West Side, who had, indeed, accidentally dropped a plate of French fries in her lap.

“I saw her on Houston,” said another. “She was crossing the street.”

“My uncle knew her,” said a third.

We went around the table, and nearly everyone had a Monica Lewinsky story.

Like me, some remembered where they were when they heard the news. Others, also like me, had gawked over the 336-page Starr Report (still available on Amazon) – soft core porn for … a different generation.

As a friend, in her early 30s, put it, “Our generation learned about sex from Monica Lewinsky.” (And Bill Clinton, of course. )

Yes, there were the questions you might expect: What gave Monica Lewinsky the right to give a TED Talk? Was it really possible she couldn’t get a job (like, not even at Starbucks)? Why was she coming forward now? How was she supporting herself? And, of course, why hadn’t she just simply changed her name and moved on?

(As Ms. Lewinsky told me about her name, in a line that was cut from the final article for space, it probably wouldn’t have mattered if she had. “It would leak, and then it would be ‘Monica Lewinsky, who now goes by [something else],’ she said. “It’s like people saying, ‘Well, why don’t you change your hair?’ So then it’s ‘Monica Lewinsky, who now has blond hair.’” She continued, “I’m not ashamed of who I am. I regret things that have happened but I’m not ashamed.”)

But most of the response was positive. As I wrote in the article, it was almost as if a kind of public reckoning was underway. People were being … nice.

Even before the talk, David Letterman and Bill Maher were expressing remorse about their previous mocking treatment of her. In May, in an interview with Barbara Walters on “The Late Show,” Mr. Letterman remarked, “I feel bad about my role in helping push the humiliation to the point of suffocation.”

Ms. Walters replied: “Good. Then we can stop.”

Journalists, too, were taking a second look at their coverage.

“I feel my own version of the malady in looking back at some of my past columns,” wrote Clarence Page of The Chicago Tribune.

“It’s passé to blame women alone for political sex scandals today,” said Allison Yarrow, a journalist who is working on a book about the cultural narratives of the 1990s and women. “Just ask Mark Sanford or Anthony Weiner.”

And readers were stating publicly that they were ready to give Ms. Lewinsky a second chance.

“This is worth 20 minutes of your time,” one woman wrote of the TED talk on Facebook. “I am disappointed in myself after listening to this story.”

“O.K., I’ve listened to Monica Lewinsky on TED,” wrote another. “I WAS WRONG! Her message is now a valid and necessary one.”

And then there was the response from women. Ms. Lewinsky had been critical of feminists she said did not support her – opting instead to put their weight behind President Clinton, who had been good for women’s rights. As Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, said at the time, “We’re trying to think of the bigger picture, think about what’s best for women.”

But this time around, there are women stating publicly that they support her.

“I think it’s possible to support both Hillary and Monica — a naïve argument could be made that they were BOTH victims of the same man,” said Jordana Narin, a 19-year-old student at Columbia who said she was impressed by Ms. Lewinsky’s speech.

In multiple events I attended with Ms. Lewinsky — in particular, the play, called “Slut,” put on by New York City high school students, and an anti-bullying conference at the Horace Mann School in the Bronx — young women flocked to her. They gushed over her bravery in coming forward, and hung on her every word. Some expressed shock that this could still be affecting her two decades later.

“We know what it feels like to have people write things about us and to judge us for our photos without knowing us,” said one 17-year old girl who saw the TED Talk.

In her talk, Ms. Lewinsky called for compassion. “Online, we’ve got a compassion deficit, an empathy crisis,” she said. “We need to return to a long-held value of compassion.”